When manufacturing spaghetti on a commercial basis, the common practice has been to drape strands of wet spaghetti over long, straight sticks or rods and to support the ends of the sticks on spaced parallel conveyor chains which carry the sticks in mutually parallel relationship through an oven. Preferably, the sticks have been carried in a horizontal direction through the top portion of the oven then lowered a distance greater than the length of the spaghetti, and then carried in a horizontal direction back across the oven. After several such passes, the spaghetti has been dried and the sticks and the spaghetti move out of the oven.
In the past, the sticks were lowered from one pair of horizontal chains to the next by means of vertically disposed chains having spaced attachments on which the ends of the sticks rested. The vertical and horizontal chains were synchronized, but for several reasons, improper stick placement and dropping of the sticks from the chains was not uncommon particularly during the transfer of the sticks from one set of conveyor chains to the next. The sticks were not held in a positive manner wherefor food or other material which could be inadvertently deposited on the sticks could result in the sticks moving too slowly during the transfer from one conveyor to the next with the result that the sticks would jam up and the spaghetti hanging from one stick would then interfere with the movement of the next adjacent stick.
Spaghetti dryers preferably include at least one compartment wherein the spaghetti is heated by microwave energy, and it is important that any leakage of microwave energy from that compartment be minimized. Consequently, it has been the practice to move the sticks and the spaghetti which hangs thereon into and out of the microwave treatment compartment through a narrow slot in the top wall of that compartment. Since the strands of spaghetti tend to flare out at the bottom and also to swing back and forth on the sticks, the entrance and exit slots were necessarily wider than the bottom widths of the bundles of spaghetti hanging on the sticks. Inasmuch as leakage of microwave energy is a function of the size of the entrance and exit openings, it would be desirable to reduce the size of these openings and thus improve the microwave trapping characteristics thereof.